Cole & Son | Scenic Flora

Scenic Flora is drawn from embroidered kimono and from the Japanese chinoiseries that reached Europe in the seventeenth century, and it is composed like a stage set, with planes receding one behind another so the field of wildflowers can be read at several depths at once. From across a room it is a landscape; from close by it is a study of individual stems.

The construction rewards that double reading. Flowers in the foreground are drawn in full detail and those behind are progressively softened, so the sense of distance is created by drawing rather than by tone. It is the reason a flat wall acquires depth, and the reason the design holds up in a room where it will be seen every day. The technique is borrowed from painted screens, where depth had to be built without perspective as Europe understood it.

It comes as a panel, 140 cm wide by 3.5 metres high, on a non-woven ground that hangs flat and stays stable. The wall wants measuring and setting out before ordering, since the composition is fixed. Behind it sits a love story, Kiku bringing Sakura a wildflower each day, which is a slight thing to hang a wallpaper on except that it explains the care taken over every bloom.